Author: Stephen

Family History Answers

So a while back Justin had a bunch of questions regarding when some of our ancestors made their way to Utah and when they joined the church and why they didn’t have land in Nauvoo and all that.  Well, after some searching I finally have some of the answers.  Here is a pdf file on familysearch.com that largely deals with the Nancy Smoot and her husband John Freeman.  It goes in depth as to where they joined the church, the missionaries that taught them, when they joined the saints, etc.  I found it to be quite informative.  It’s about 13 pages, so feel free to download it and read it when you have time.

Another pdf file that focuses more on John can be found here.  This one goes more in depth to the childhood of John, including his becoming an orphan at an early age, as well as accounts from Wilford Woodruff’s journals concerning the probable teaching of the Freeman family.  It mentions the North Carolina years for the Freeman family (which occurred prior to the birth of John) but I don’t know what those years held for the Freemans.  Perhaps this could be something Justin could look more into?  The majority of the Nancy Smoot file is repeated here, but there are quite a new number of stories/facts told, largely through the journal accounts of others.  The file also contains the patriarchal blessings of John and Nancy as given by Isaac Morley.

Be sure to read the footnotes, you can learn a lot of really interesting things (ie: did you know that some U of U medical researchers were made aware of a condition called “Freeman’s Syndrome” which apparently began with William Hamblin? see footnote 61 for details on what it is).

Independence History

Here in time for Independence Day is a list of 25 signers of the Declaration of Independence that according to this BYU/Family Search thing we are related to.  If for some reason it doesn’t work, try signing in with your Familysearch info and register with the site to see the list.  You can check out how you are related and what the exact relationship is (ex: 12th Cousin 8 times removed is……Samuel Adams)

Enjoy!

It’s (still) a girl!

Well, as you all heard, Evangeline Paiyumsi Freeman was born yesterday, November 5, at 2:50 pm at Timpanogos Regional Hospital in Orem. She was 7 lbs 2 oz, and was 18.5 inches long.
We first went to the hospital on Sunday morning. Amy woke me up around 3:30 am and let me know her contractions were 3-5 min apart, which was a sign that our doctor said could be an indicator of needing to go to the hospital. After arriving at the hospital we were told after about an hour that her contractions weren’t nearly strong enough and we could go home. So we did.
Yesterday morning Amy woke me up at 4 am and let me know that her water broke. We initially planned on having her labor at home in the warm tub for a bit before going to the hospital but that didn’t last too long due to her water being slightly discolored. We got to the hospital around 6:30 and got all checked in. By 12:30 she was at a seven and opted to take something to help take the edge off of her pain (even though it didn’t really have any effect) but still let her feel what was going on. By 2 she was good to push and 50 minutes later Evangeline was here (despite us not knowing her name yet).
All in all everyone has been good. I know some of you have seen pics on facebook, but I figured everyone would want to see!

Depressed Census

So when they released the 1940 census recently, I was interested in finding Dad’s parent’s info and Mom’s grandparent’s as well, and comparing it to the 1930 census. I had a harder time finding Mom’s side of things, since the Indian census and the National census didn’t always coincide as well as one would think. Anyways, comparing the two, it really is see how blessed the Freemans were in terms of getting through the depression. Each census page with the info is shown below, you’ll probably have to enlarge them to clearly see the questions that head each column.